THE MAINSTREAM media generally does a poor job of reporting and commenting on itself. That's why it's important that we have a show like RNZ's Mediawatch. It provides news and analysis of media-related issues that would probably go uncovered. Hosted and produced by Stephen Peacock, its mostly a bright and informative show. An added bonus is the obvious delight it takes in regularly highlighting some of the many foibles and errors of commercial talkback station, Newstalk ZB. Even if it is a little like shooting fish in a barrel.
But over the past fifteen months or so, Mediawatch has had its liberal limitations well and truly exposed. Its failure to provide even a single report on the New Zealand mainstream media's coverage of events in Gaza has, frankly, been a disgrace and completely unacceptable by the country's only public broadcaster.
Over the summer hiatus, a ceasefire (of sorts, and not on the West Bank) was agreed to between Israel and Hamas. But even that wasn't enough to prompt Mediawatch to reference Gaza in its first show of the year, which focused on providing a summary of media-related issues that had cropped up over the summer. It seems that Gaza is to remain off the radar of the show for the foreseeable future at least.
Why has Mediawatch decided to give Gaza a wide berth? Why has it decided to give the media a free pass as far as its coverage is concerned? It's almost as if the show has decided that if it can't say anything good about the media coverage, it won't say anything at all.
In December journalist Gordon Campbell commented:
'In this country, a structure has become evident in the Gaza coverage. First off, there’s a preponderance of Israeli government/IDF spokespeople in the news bulletins. On a typical news day, the media will carry word of the latest IDF atrocity, then present audio of the IDF rationalisation for it, and subsequently... Someone else might get to describe the carnage on the ground.
'The people providing that description will tend to be outsiders from the UN or Doctors Without Borders, or some other relief agency. Commonly, the Palestinian victims will appear only when in the throes of immense grief. The media’s interpretive framework for their suffering tends to be 95% Israeli.'
Isn't the lopsided treatment of Gaza by the corporate media, not worthy of the attention of Mediawatch? Will it continue to ignore Gaza in 2025?
Of course, dropping Gaza into the 'too hard' basket means that Mediawatch can avoid having to ask any hard questions of RNZ itself. Like, why has RNZ continued to display a bias toward Israel by referring to Israel's barbaric assault as a legitimate 'war', rather than the genocide it really is. In the face of some of the horrifying videos that have come out of Gaza, why has RNZ remained silent?
RNZ likes to boast of its support for 'decolonisation' in New Zealand, albeit with no mention of capitalism. However, its support for 'decolonisation' in New Zealand doesn't extend to providing a voice to the Palestinian people fighting their own colonial and imperialist oppressor.
Unfortunately, the timidity displayed by Colin Peacock and his Mediawatch colleague Hayden Donnell, mirrors the timidity displayed by RNZ journalists in general. What sort of suffocating political culture exists within RNZ where not one journalist has been prepared to speak out, even when over 200 fellow journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military?
Assuming that they have not all been intimidated into silence by conservative CEO Paul Thompson, it seems that the present journalists that inhabit RNZ are happy to remain the courtiers of the political establishment and regurgitate official press statements.
RNZ has turned into a lifestyle radio station for the middle class. A bit like an aural 'Listener'.
ReplyDelete